The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,

     And the trees have a silver glare;

Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,

     And the harpies of upper air,

     That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread

     Never shone in the sunset’s gleam,

But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep

     Where the rivers of madness stream

     Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves

     In the meadows that shimmer pale,

And comes to twine where the headstones shine

     And the ghouls of the churchyard wail

     For the harvests that fly and fail.

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change

     That tore from the past its own

Can quicken this hour, when a spectral pow’r

     Spreads deep o’er the cosmic throne

     And looses the vast unknown.

So here again stretch the vale and plain

     That moons long-forgotten saw,

And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,

     Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw

     To shake all the world with awe.

And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,

     The ugliness and the pest

Of rows where thick rise the stone and brick,

     Shall some day be with the rest,

     And brood with the shades unblest.

Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,

     And the leprous spires ascend;

For new and old alike in the fold

     Of horror and death are penn’d,

     For the hounds of Time to rend.